One Hundred Years of Solitude Study Guide

Chapter Summaries

One Hundred Years of Solitude Summary of Chapters

Chapter 1-3

The novel begins with as a flashback, where we see Colonel Aureliano Buendía reminiscing the years that came just after the founding of Macondo. That was the time when a band of gypsies used to bring technological wonders to the isolated and dreamy village. José Arcadio Buendía, the perpetually curious founder of the town, is enamored of these magical marvels. These appeal to the scientist in him, who is ever curious about technology and how things work. After this, the novel now moves backward in time. Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía are cousins born in a small village, the great-grandchildren of the survivors of the attack by Sir Francis Drake on Riohacha.

Chapter 4-6

Úrsula Iguarán discovers a route connecting Macondo with civilization, and as a result, the village begins to transform. The Buendía family grows along with the village, and José Arcadio Buendía plays a key role in the spreading out of both. As the gypsy Melquíades dies, we come to know that he is also the first to die in Macondo. The mourning period comes and goes, and something like true happiness comes over the house: Rebeca and Pietro Crespi are courting in love, and Remedios is becoming closer to her future husband Aureliano. The happiness is like a raging fire that catches everything up, and they feel it will always be like this.

Chapter 7-10

Aureliano was despondent after the death of Remedios and given himself up to solitude, soon finds a bigger object of worry: the upcoming war in between the insurgent Liberals and the Conservative government—and the man who stands for it in Macondo is the magistrate Don Apolinar Moscote. We know that he is Aureliano’s father-in-law. While Arcadio’s dictatorship continues and the war rages, Pietro Crespi proposes marriage to Amaranta, and despite her love for him she cruelly rejects him, and he commits suicide. In terrible sorrow, she burns her hand and uses a black bandage to cover her hand permanently. She would never again remove it till her death, as a reminder of her cruelty to the one she loved.